Just Friends? Guys Reveal Sexual Interest in Gal Pals

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Can men and women be "just friends?" A new study suggests the
answer is yes — but guys may be more attracted to their gal
friends than vice versa.

Men report more sexual interest in their female friends than
their female friends do in them, and men are also more likely
than women to overestimate how romantically interested their
friends are in them. In most cases, sexual attraction within a
friendship is seen as
more of a burden than a benefit, the study finds.

"I think men and women do want to be friends, they do want to
engage in platonic friendships," said study researcher April
Bleske-Rechek, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Eau
Claire. "But the data I've been collecting suggests that
attractions can get in the way."

Friends without benefits

Friendship is an interesting area to study because it doesn't
have obvious reproductive advantages, Bleske-Rechek told
LiveScience. Evolutionary psychologists often focus on sexual
relationships and familial relationships, under the assumption
that humans evolved to pass on their own genes to the next
generation. But friends don't share
genetic ties or offspring, and yet they still help each other
out. [ 6
Scientific Tips for a Successful Relationship ]

Bleske-Rechek and her colleagues were interested in how
heterosexual, opposite-sex friends dealt with issues of sexual
attraction that might come up in their friendships. First, they
recruited 88 pairs of opposite-sex college-age friends to fill
out questionnaires about their friendship. The researchers had
pairs of friends come in so they could be sure that each member
of the pair agreed that they were in a friendship, preventing
one-sided relationships from muddying the waters.

The participants separately answered questions about their
friendship, including their levels of attraction to one another.
To discourage pressure to share the answers later, the
researchers instructed the friends to keep their answers
confidential, even after the study.

The results revealed that men are more attracted to their female
friends than their female friends are to them. Such overestimating
of women's interest is not unusual for men, Bleske-Rechek
said.

"Men over-infer women's
sexual interest in a variety of contexts, and I definitely
see that extending into the domain of cross-sex friendships as
well," Bleske-Rechek said.

Attraction to friends

Men who were romantically involved were no less likely than
single guys to say they found their female friend attractive or
to say they'd like to go
on a date with her. Women who were romantically involved were
also equally as likely as single gals to be attracted to their
male friends, but they drew the line at dating, with fewer women
in relationships saying they'd date their guy friend.

The researchers next wanted to expand their findings outside the
college student realm, so they sent questionnaires 107 young
adults ages 18 to 23 and 322 adults between the ages of 27 and
55. In these questionnaires, participants were asked about their
cross-sex friendships and were given the opportunity to list
their own reasons why those friendships were both beneficial and
burdensome.

Although older adults reported fewer opposite-sex friends than
the younger group did, everyone was very positive about these
friendships, ranking them as
overwhelmingly beneficial. But when people listed attraction
on the "costs and benefits" list, it almost always fell under a
"cost." Almost half of the young adults in the study
spontaneously mentioned attraction as a problem in their
friendships, the researchers reported April 25 in the Journal of
Social and Personal Relationships.

There was a slight sex difference to this finding, such that men
were less likely to call sexual attraction to a friend a cost
than women were, although they were still unlikely to see it as a
positive. [ 5
Ways Relationships Are Good for You ]

"When it does come up as a benefit, it's more likely to be a guy
saying it," Bleske-Rechek said.

The finding shouldn't be interpreted to mean that men and women
can't be friends, Bleske-Rechek said, just that we may have to
overcome our evolutionary history to do so.

"It's very likely that the modern environment has changed so
quickly that we've got these novel opportunities to engage in a
variety of types of relationship with the opposite sex that we
probably didn't, historically," she said. "It's going to take us
a while to adjust."